Frost Free Gardening

My selection of gardening books was shipped out here to the US. My book collection is now actually bigger than my gardening space since we only have a small patio with a few pots. Developing this area and adding plants has been a luxury, which I’ve put aside, it just hasn’t been a priority since the move. Time has been spent on other things.

The books are well loved and well used. As a novice gardener, several years ago, I would read and read trying to understand where and when to plant things. Why plants didn’t grow or flower. Why they died. How big they would get.

Each book is covered with dog-eared pages or splatters of mud where I’ve come in from the garden to check things with muddy hands. Or, I’ve walked around the garden holding the book trying to find the right plant. I’m messy. My cookbooks are covered with flour. My gardening books are covered with mud.

There’s one section, in each book, which is pristine and so far, during my gardening life, I’ve been forbidden to even consider planting anything from these pages. I’ve looked, of course, flicked through the pages but anything that couldn’t withstand a British winter was off limits.

My gardening bible, the RHS’s Guide to Plants and Flowers, has a symbol for each plant showing how tough it is and how much frost it can cope with. When choosing plants, the Hardy guide was my first point of reference. Full hardy, frost hardy, half hardy. If it wasn’t ‘full hardy’ it wouldn’t cope with the temperatures in my area of the UK. Not only are British winters brutal on plants, I was told our house was in a ‘frost pocket,’ a microclimate of extra coldness. Now, as I start browsing through my gardening bible, if it’s got a hardy sign, I don’t want to know. It can withstand a nasty frost? No thank you. I want something that would keel over at the first sign of frost. Would need to winter in a greenhouse or conservatory in the UK. I want tropical, just because I can.

I’m still a bit confused about how things know when to flower out here. At the moment bulbs are for sale in the garden centres but how do they know when it’s winter, when it’s spring and they need to shoot? In the UK they get a sure sign not to come up, it’s bloody freezing, there’s frost on the ground. Surely over here they must be thinking ‘when do I come up?!’

I’m heading off to Rogers Gardens next week. It’s on my calendar, I’m going. I’m allowing myself that time. It’s like the Harrods of garden centres right here in Newport Beach. Incredibly ritzy, wonderfully inspiring, amazing plants. I’m hoping to get some advice, design ideas and then come home and start my planning.

I just know I’m going to outgrow the patio almost instantly. I’ll have to start being more creative with my ideas, just like other people on the peninsula.